I'm a professional scavenger making a living selling curbside garbage. This blog details my finds and sales. It also acts as an archive for things beautiful and historic that would otherwise have been destroyed.

A busy few days

Hey all, long time no see. It’s been a busy week for me. It was the end of the month, so I had a fair amount of moving work to do. I also had to move myself out of my room, in preparation for my two month road trip / vacation to B.C / Grand Prairie, Alberta. I’m leaving tomorrow, omg!

While on the trip, we might come across some sweet trash, and we’re pretty broke so we may be eating out of the dumpsters, so I should be able to post some pics for you. It might be cool to have some variety and observe the subtle differences in garbage across the country. Regardless, I should be back for the end of June, which is a great time for garbage in Montreal.

In the meantime, I’ve still found time to hunt for trash. I didn’t take many pictures, as I misplaced my camera for a few days as well, so I’ll give you a short summary of the most notable trash.

April 30th was a pretty big day for me. I worked in the morning and helped someone turn two storage rooms into one in the early afternoon. I walked up to McGill for around 4pm and instantly began finding all kinds of stuff. A lot of McGill students move home in the summer, so they often leave all kinds of stuff behind. I got all kinds of good quality kitchen stuff (including some nice stainless steel pots and pans), a lot of good food, and an Iphone with accessories (doesn’t turn on, but it’s worth something either way). It’s a good thing my friend was working in the area and had a van, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to bring home half the stuff I found.

That garbage day at McGill was the most intense I’ve ever gone to. All kinds of people seem to know about the surplus of good free stuff, and it was fairly competitive towards the end. It was garbage day, so there was a sense that you needed to rush around and get it before the truck did. As a result, I made a bit more of a mess than I normally would, but I made up for it by helping the garbage men throw the stuff into the compactor. In the end, I probably saved about 3 bags of stuff from the landfill. Most of it I sold or gave away at a yard sale I had yesterday.

It was still garbage day in my area, so when I got back with this stuff I went out looking for more. I forgot how good it is at the end of the month, especially in the spring and summer; people moving around, having to leave stuff behind, and so on. I came across some pretty sweet stuff.

I found a bunch on Hotel-de-ville, near Villeneuve. I looked around for a while, and then four of my friends came and met me there. Good thing too, I needed extra hands! It was a win win, as my friends got some good stuff, like a working VCR and books.

As for me, my favorites from that spot were a few boxes of typewriter ribbons, which are hard to find. I got a garden hose that coils up, which I sold at the yard sale for 10$. Also:

I got this left-handed skill saw that seems to work perfectly fine. The man who threw most of the stuff out came out after and told us the story. He was a young guy, maybe around 30, and of Venezuelan background, and he told us that most of the stuff was his father’s, who had passed away in December. He said simply that he didn’t like all these things of his father’s around, constantly reminding him of his death. He seemed like a good person, and was happy that we were going to use the stuff.

We walked home with all this stuff, but I felt the nagging urge to go look a bit more. There was still so much stuff out. (I use the word “stuff” a lot eh?). It was pretty late and usually all the garbage would be picked up by then; however, there was just so much that they were falling behind in the schedule.

I’m glad I went back out, because I found this:

A working bass guitar. I’m not sure why anyone would throw this out. It was left on top of a crappy looking old couch. I’ve already had a couple of offers to buy it, and my friend tells me it’s worth probably 100$. I’m going to leave it here until I get back, and then I might look into selling it.

Anyways, I should get back to packing, however light it may be. It’s also Thursday, so I have one more garbage day before I head out 🙂